The Chocolate Kiddies is a three-act Broadway-styled revue that, in its inaugural production – from May to September 1925 – toured Berlin, Hamburg, Stockholm, and Copenhagen. The show never actually performed on Broadway, but was conceived, assembled, and rehearsed there. Chocolate Kiddies commissioned new works, but was also an amalgamation and adaptation of several leading African American acts in New York, specifically Harlem, intended to showcase exemplary jazz and African American artistry of the Harlem Renaissance. Early jazz was uniquely American; and, while New Orleans enjoys popularity for being its birthplace, the jazz emerging from Harlem during the Renaissance had, on its own merits, captured international intrigue.

The impetus for producing the Chocolate Kiddies was partly a culmination or outgrowth of (i) the success of a Harlem (and Atlantic City) jazz band led by Sam Wooding (1895–1985) and a floor show, initially developed for the 1923 opening of the Nest Club and (ii) the success of Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle's Broadway musical, The Chocolate Dandies, which, after 96 performances, closed November 22, 1924 ... leaving some of the cast available, from which, the Chocolate Kiddies picked up choreographer Charlie Davis and singer Lottie Gee. The cast included singer Adelaide Hall, who came from the Miller and Lyles Broadway production Runnin' Wild, The Three Eddies, Rufus Greenlee and Thaddeus Drayton, Bobbie and Babe Goins, Charles Davis and Sam Wooding and his Orchestra.

Leoni Leonidoff (né Leonid Davydovich Leonidoff-Bermann; born abt. 1886) became the owner-producer of the Chocolate Kiddies tour. He was a Russian-Jewish exile living in Berlin as a theatrical impresario.

Leonidoff's introduction to Wooding was possibly influenced by a Russian-Jewish-born American impresario living in New York, Morris Gest (1875–1942) and his brother and partner, Sam Gest (1889–1960), an impresario living in Berlin. Leonidoff, in 1925, signed Wooding to take his band on a European tour, provided that a musical revue was added.

Russian-born Jewish American impresario Arthur Seymour Lyons (1895–1964) staged an adaptation and, for several weeks prior to departure, rehearsed the company at Bryant Hall. Before settling on the name Chocolate Kiddies, the show had been billed as the Club Alabam Revue and Club Alabam Fantasies.

Duke Ellington, with Jo Trent as lyricist, composed four songs for the production – his first work for a musical revue genre.

After a farewell reception at the Bamville Club in Harlem two days earlier, over 500 theatrical professionals swarmed the White Star Line Pier (either Pier 59 or 60; current site of Chelsea Piers) on May 6, 1925, as Wooding, his band, and the revue performers boarded the SS Arabic and departed for Hamburg.

Members of the revue who did not travel aboard the SS Arabic included Helen Miles, Willie Robbins, Arthur Robbins, Ruth Williams, and Evelyn Dove, who traveled from London. Lottie Gee was aboard as Lottie Kyer – she had been married from 1913 to 1924 to pianist "Peaches" Kyer (né Wilson Harrison Kyer; 1888–1982).